NATO Sabre-Rattling: New “Missile Crisis” in Eastern Europe?

In a video posted on Information Clearing House on July 27, Russian President Putin announced in a speech that Anti-Ballistic Missile bases that NATO is planning to install in Romania, may have to be knocked out if they are nearing readiness. Russia sees such missiles as a clear threat of a US nuclear first strike on Russia which the ABMs would prevent Russia from responding to with a counter-strike, thereby undermining the system of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) that has prevented thermonuclear war between the US and Russia (or the predecessor Soviet Union) for many decades.

Putin says that he has been told that the ABM missiles are intended to be activated to counter a supposed Iranian nuclear threat (even though Iran has been prevented from developing nuclear weapons). He says that the USA is lying. He says that such bases could shoot down Russian missiles while attacks are being made by NATO against Moscow.

Putin says that Russia has not been able to afford the design and building of a defensive system such as NATO is installing, and must therefore rely on its offensive nuclear weapon capabilities, or the use of conventional weapons to eliminate the danger posed by the ABMs on its border. (See: informationclearinghouse.info/article45193.htm)

In an email sent as part of another Information Clearing House collection on the threat of war, Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at NYU and Princeton says: “We are approaching a Cuban Missile Crisis-level nuclear confrontation with Russia. And there is absolutely no discussion , no debate, about this in the American media.” (See informationclearinghouse.info/article45219.htm )

Information Clearing House has had many such opinions raised this year about the dangers of a possible nuclear war, from a variety or right and left wing commentators.